


Episode 23: Should the Mountain Fall

by PitoyaPTx



Series: Clan Meso'a [23]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Clan Meso'a, Clan schism, Death by broken heart, Gen, Mandalorian, Mandalorian Culture, Metaphors, Tragedy, betrayal of a friend, clan dynamics, important ancestors, learning from your elders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2020-03-02 18:53:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18816952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PitoyaPTx/pseuds/PitoyaPTx
Summary: "Technically, it was a heart attack" ~TamKinships dig the deepest wounds.





	Episode 23: Should the Mountain Fall

**Author's Note:**

> (see next episode for explanation of dar'choxul)

In a display of respect, Fiyn chose a Rachi from each tribe. However, their names have been lost to us, maybe out of grief or out of respect for their sacrifice, for all four perished along with Mand’alor and the majority of Clan Lok.  
The sky might as well have grown dark, for the world felt that way. Fiyn was beside herself, dealing with a mixture of grief and unbridled rage at the forces of Zakuul. No one could stop her from boarding her ship, from leading the armada into the Core… no one but her brother. He allowed her to ascend to the space station, but he commanded her to go no further. In her stead, Winnu, the Choxultz’alor, lead the first ever army of Enad ready to take on the Eternal Fleet and come back victorious...but again, none survived. Fiyn, now overwhelmed by her sadness, took off in her ship. She told her brother, her alor, in front of the council that he was a fool. That his words of trust and confidence in his sister were all lies, that he would grow grey in the shadow of the mountain.  
And so she left.  
She left on her own.  
She left to for the Core.  
She left to recover the bodies of their fallen.  
She left to seek help from the other Clans, help from their fellow mando’ade.  
She left...and in four months time she returned... 

But we were not the Clan she left, and she was not the Fiyn we hoped would return. She came home broken and defeated to a Clan ablaze with turmoil and loss. Her brother was dead, having lost in ritual combat to his replacement. His name was Ah’ramki, the fifth Alor Hyda Haria'n of the Mountain tribe. In his mind, Fiyn was right to denounce her brother. She should have been allowed to lead the charge herself, and maybe she could have saved their people from slaughter. Maybe Winnu wouldn’t have died, leaving the task of warrior’s training to her young and inexperienced brother, Carem. Vax’vad was already so broken, so lacking in choxul, that he perished like paper in fire at the strikes of Ah’ramki’s twin blades. Despite the legitimacy of his claim to power, many were forever stained by the weakness exposed in Vax’vad. One such Enad was a woman named Haria’n Ellirva, Fiyn’s attendant in waiting. Should her guards fall, it was Ellirva who would step up to fight with her alor. Seeing Vax’vad fall, watching her clan sink into turmoil...greeting her tear stained Alor as she appeared one day, walking up to the council room with eyes misted and dull..  
Ellirva set down her spear at Fiyn’s feet, and never looked back.  
She abandoned her post, and with her went hundreds upon thousands of good Enad traumatized by their first taste of what being Mando’ade truly meant. Ah’ramki wasted no time declaring them dar’manda but they didn’t care. Some spat in the faces of the Crusaders, tore down their statues, and uprooted sacred altars as they migrated to the East, setting up their own cities and reverting back to the old ways.  
Though they remained Enad, and we Mando’ade, our peoples were forever split. Fiyn had no time to process this, no time or even a desire to grieve her brother for they say as Ellirva abandoned her, she collapsed against Baradta and expired on the spot from a wound beneath her breastplate. What we now know as cardiac arrest we then called a broken heart…(Tam paused for a moment and took another labored breath), but dying broken hearted is more befitting to her memory.  
“Do you know why we call her ‘Vin’alor’?” asked Cho.  
Cara, who was doing her best to hold back her own broken heart triggered by Fiyn’s plight, shook her head but didn’t speak. She feared opening her mouth in case she croaked out her words.  
“When an alor leaves an impact on our Clan, an impact that we still recognize over time, we called them ‘Vin’alor’,” Cho curled a strip of leather on his lap into a closed-ended swirl, “This is the symbol ‘Vin’ka’, the symbol of the stars. Our ancestors believed that the stars held power because Mother Rahast and the Crusaders with Father Kad descended from the sky.”  
Cara nodded, although she had yet to full grasp either deity.  
“If Fiyn is anywhere,” he went on, straightening out the cord and tossing it back in with the others, “She must be in the sky looking down on us, not looking up from the ground where the dead go to sleep.”  
“She is very much alive,” said Tam, her voice hoarse from speaking for so long, “Her fire was dampened, but not put out.”  
“Who did it?” Cara asked, finally finding her voice somewhere deep within her chest, “Who broke her heart? Her brother?”  
She dared look up at her companions and saw that all of them, even Jecho, had the same solemn stare plastered across their faces. For a moment, Cara wished she hadn’t spoke. This story, Fiyn’s story, felt like something she wasn’t meant to know. It was as though knowing changed everything, a kind of knowledge that once you’ve heard it you can’t unsee just how deep the hurt goes. Truth be told she had no idea who Zakuul was or how long ago Artus Lok had been Mand’alor, but it seemed too fresh of a wound for it to be that far in the past.  
Weiyn, who’d been silent during Tam’s retelling, sighed loudly, “Well if you’re not going to tell her I will.” Her voice shook with anger, “The other clans abandoned us.”  
She hissed the words with so much venom, Cara felt the urge to shrink back. To her surprise, no one challenged her, not even Jecho who even seemed to be nodding.  
“Ah’ramki was furious, livid, murderous when Fiyn died,” Weiyn continued as if that same rage coursed within her, “Bralor, Beroya, Ordo, they all denied us! They told him they could not recover our dead because they were too close to the usurpers, too far from the last safe havens now overflowing with all those displaced by the war. Our,” her voice caught, “Our sons, daughters, mothers, fathers… they were ours to recover. Not theirs. We were not theirs, not their vode. Not one of them.” Her voice became a cold whisper and her good eye was milky with memory.  
Cho nudged the box of cords away, turned slightly onto his side, and pushed off from the well. His pi’il, a traditional poncho-type garment, slid down across his chest to his waist where Cara swore she saw a concealed blaser. He hobbled around Tam and Jecho to his wife. She looked up at him with her good eye, her lips parted as if she wanted to say something. He took her hand in his.  
“These words, dar’choxul,” he said so softly it might have been a trick of the wind, but his kiss to her forehead was not.  
She shut her eye, a deep frown creasing across her face. Cara looked away. That was something she wasn’t meant to see.


End file.
